GAA: The jury may still be out on his football prowess, but the hurling full back won't fail with the big ball for the lack of effort, writes Keith Duggan.
Most people land after long haul flights to find they have lost their car keys or that their luggage has been dispatched to a different continent. Diarmuid O'Sullivan arrived back in Dublin after the January All-Star hurling trip to Buenos Aires to discover that he had, overnight, become a Cork senior football player.
Dual acts are nothing new in Cork's rich legacy, but still. Jimmy Barry-Murphy, Teddy McCarthy and more recently Seán Óg Ó hÁilpín were tutored in clubs where both Gaelic football and hurling flourished. O'Sullivan, however, was renowned as a son of Cloyne, home of Christy Ring and a shrine of hurling.
"We have football in Cloyne also," was the typically deadpan reply attributed to O'Sullivan in reaction to his elevation to Larry Tompkins' side. Although his selection at full forward - a symmetrical contrast to his defensive duties around the small square for the hurlers - seemed like a delightful gamble on behalf of the football selectors, it was much more considered than that.
"It's true that Cloyne is a junior football club, but after winning their divisional title, they had a good run in the Cork championship," says football selector Eamonn Ryan. "I had seen the promise that Diarmuid displayed as a footballer at underage level and that was manifest again in his performances with Cloyne last summer. We invited him along to training and again his showing was impressive."
The demands on modern-day inter-county athletes have been blown up to infamous proportions, so that while the dual star has traditionally been celebrated, caution has come to bear. Already, Cork vice-chairman Jim Forbes warned that the county's dual exponents would face difficulty when the GAA calendar grows denser. And while the hurling and football managements have been agreeable about the Cloyne man's quest to pursue both sports, there has already been a minor mix-up as to which team he would be with on a given weekend. But so far, it has proven possible, with O'Sullivan due to hurl against Wexford in Páirc Uí Chaoimh today and then try to poach a few scores against Tommy Lyons's Dublin in the NFL tomorrow.
"I think the first thing to emphasise is that Diarmuid is very keen to make this work himself," says Ryan. "I would be the first to agree that the demands are very high and I think that it is probably more difficult to play both games now than it was even five years ago. But he has the perfect temperament for it. Although he is very serious on the field, he brings a light-hearted approach and I think he wants to enjoy this."
That has been O'Sullivan's steadfast approach to his sporting life. After captaining divisional side Imokilly to the Cork hurling title in 1999, he went on to lead JBM's precocious side to the NHL and the Munster title. He prepared for the All-Ireland as a 20-year-old captain without a care in the world. In fact, as he told Denis Walsh of the Sunday Times the week before Cork defeated Kilkenny, he actively sought out resident comic Seanie McGrath on the days of big games.
"I'll have a laugh with him. Other lads mightn't like you to have the craic, but I tend to get serious only when we go into the dressing-room. I feel that if I thought about the game for too long before that, I might lose it."
Affable as O'Sullivan is off the field, he is a teaktough hurler, naturally aggressive and the most physically-imposing player in the game. His childhood in Cloyne helped develop this.
"Any fella with a hurl from the age of 13 is allowed play," he said of the evening games at the pitch in his parish. "That's when I started. You'd take your life into your hands going in there. If you got in somebody's way, it's your own fault."
That remains his abiding principle and watching O'Sullivan wind the stick back to clear the ball is the hurling equivalent of the young George Foreman hitting the heavy bag, a compelling evocation of legitimate force. He is a wonderfully forceful performer, an excellent leader in the JBM years, and now promising much for the footballers. His tally of 1-2 against Galway captain Gary Fahey in the last 20 minutes of last Sunday's league win in Ballinasloe served as an announcement of his arrival.
"Well, it had been nip and tuck between them up to that point and when Diarmuid got the few chances, he certainly took them," says Ryan. "But I mean, that is just one game. As Diarmuid constantly points out, he has a long way to go and needs to make an impact on a regular basis if this experiment is to work out."
O'Sullivan's impact has already alerted Cork's resident forward giant Colin Corkery, currently easing his club side Nemo Rangers back to a second consecutive All-Ireland club final. But laid back as O'Sullivan is, Corkery is the most chilled out figure in Irish sport and he is not about to get tetchy about competition for the jersey.
"It's good to see and that's what playing in the county side is all about," Corkery says. "Everyone has to fight for a place, I am no different."
While it may be somewhat previous to arrive at any definitive conclusion about O'Sullivan as footballer, his emergence is of no great surprise around Cloyne.
"We knew since he was a young fella that he could play but he always had the greater love for the small ball, as they say," says Cloyne clubman Donie Cahill. "I think last year's championship run stoked his interest again and he is just eager to see how he might get on. Being such a small club, we are naturally thrilled to have a representative in both teams. We pull from around 50 players and football championships are a rarity here - I think Diarmuid's father played last time we won.
"Diarmuid has played in all positions for our football team, but he was a very strong presence at full forward. It's early days yet but I think that provided he avoids an injury, he has a good chance. The real test will be when the football comes close to championship standard. But his experience in the hurling championship and his temperament are a massive advantage."
O'Sullivan is circumspect about the days ahead. Regarding this hectic weekend, he remarked, "I'll just see what happens. I'll give it a go and see how we get on. It was a real experience playing the All-Ireland champions in Tuam and I am enjoying myself."
That he remains committed to hurling has been made unequivocally clear by all involved with the Cork side and if, down the road, he is forced to make a choice, then football will lose out. But given the player's desire to make this work, there is a reasonable degree of optimism that he can balance the two.
"For us, the situation is simple. It's not ideal that he is playing hurling the day before a league game, but I mean Diarmuid has always been a hurler so we can't complain," says Ryan. "All I can say is that the relationship between both sets of management is excellent and hopefully we can iron out any potential problems."
However today's hurling clash against Wexford materialises, tomorrow is the sort of situation in which Diarmuid O'Sullivan thrives.
Dublin are on a roll and their visit to the Leeside stadium is the stuff that makes Corkonians gleeful with anticipation. The Cloyne man may still be earning his stripes, but you won't find him hiding. Hasn't he been kicking football all his life?
